US B2B advertising dips

12 August 2014

NEW YORK: Overall B2B advertising in the US dipped 0.5% to $10.2bn in 2013 according to a new study which shows the top 100 pulling away from everyone else.

Ad Age DataCenter's analysis of measured-media spending data from Kantar Media – including estimates of spending across TV, internet (display ads only), magazines, newspapers, radio and outdoor – found that the top 100 B2B advertisers accounted for almost half of the total at $4.9bn. This represented a 3.4% increase on the previous year and stood in marked contrast to the remainder which registered a 3.8% fall in spending.

Advertising Age noted that this mirrored a trend already observed in the overall advertising market which had seen media spending rise fastest among the biggest advertisers (up 3.2% for the top 100, up 33% for 101-1,000 and down 6.6% for the smallest spenders).

Leading B2B advertisers were evidently being increasingly selective about their approach as they increased spending on internet display advertising, TV and outdoor but reduced it in all other media categories.

Internet was the fastest-growing medium for the top 100, up 25.3% in 2013, surpassing magazine spending for the first time. TV and outdoor rose rather more modestly, at 3.0% and 2.4% respectively.

Radio was hardest hit among the remaining media, as spending there declined 13.7%, while newspapers were also badly affected (-9.4%); magazines, however, fared relatively well, as expenditure in both B2B and consumer titles was down only 0.3%.

The top B2B advertiser in 2013 was Microsoft, whose spending jumped 34.6% to an estimated $290.6m. It was followed by Apple, whose B2B expenditure leapt 39% to an estimated $218.1m, and AT&T, up 6.6% to $201.3m.